The One In Which Danny Suffers From Pox Of The Chicken
by CassandraHolly
Summary: "Danny?" Danny slowly turned his head, a pitiful look on his face. Dougie was sat on the floor by his sofa, looking slightly put out. "Danny, are you going to turn in to a chicken?"


_This was written because I needed someway to thank the absoloutely incredible and gorgeous Galaxy-Defending_Hopeful, who's been unbelievaby supportive of me. I don't know where chicken pox came in to it, I really don't._  
_I hope you like it, and thank you :-)_

* * *

"England hasn't seen a day this hot since the heatwave of 1997, and it's certainly sent businesses all over the country sky rocketing as people make the most of this sunny day. Only the beginning of May, and already we're at 72 degrees Fahrenheit, with expected rises in heat over the South West-"  
The beaming blonde on the television set was speaking to herself, as far as the band house was concerned. The living room was empty, but not motionless- the curtains floated in the almost non-existent breeze blowing through the window, and the clock ticked slowly over the mantelpiece. Apart from the muffled noises associated with these movements, the room was silent- as was the rest of the house.  
This lack of life continued long after the weather report had come to an end. In fact it was four hours before the curtain of silence over the house was lifted. But the serenity had to come to an end- and end it did, in the form of a high pitched shriek mainly saved for those alarms elderly people put out to prevent cats from digging up their gardens. You know, the ones that throw anybody under the age of fifteen within a twelve-mile radius in to a suicidal coma. Those ones.

* * *

Tom finally hit full consciousness when his hair was on end and the windows were in danger of breaking. By the time he was sat up with both hands over his ears, the noise had died out and silence had resumed in the McFly house. Sighing, he stretched his arms out above his head and prepared to venture out of his shady chamber down in to the unknown.

It was, he had concluded, going to be _one of those _days.

* * *

Dougie had also been wrenched from sleep by the scream. Unlike Tom, he hadn't woken to a dark, cool bedroom. Having left his curtains open and his window closed, Dougie opened his eyes and found himself not only blinded by the sun, but also lying in a pool of- what he presumed- was his own sweat. Well, he hoped it was his own sweat. He hadn't peed the bed for a good few years and would prefer to keep it that way.

Also unlike Tom, he didn't bother getting up to search for the source of the heart-wrenching scream. No, he just rolled off the bed, curled up in a relatively shaded spot under the surround-sound system, and fell back asleep.

* * *

Harry, having the smallest ears in the band (this, Tom theorised, was to balance out the enormity of his nose) didn't hear the shriek at all, and so continued to sleep peacefully in his king-sized bed.

* * *

"Danny!"

There was no reply. Tom slammed his forearm against the door in a half-arsed attempt at a knock. He had expected the door to be locked, though, and seeing as how it wasn't, he quickly found the rest of his body following the arm in an elegant belly flop on to the floor of Danny's humble abode.  
"Don't look at me!" There was a blur of Northern stupidity followed by a thump as somebody hit the same floor on the other side of the room. "I'm hideous!"

"You only just realised that?" Tom growled, pulling himself back to his feet and beginning to pick his way through a year's worth of dirty clothing to reach his most irritating friend.

"That's not funny! This is serious, Tom!"

Danny sounded genuinely heartbroken. Tom hesitated. Could Danny actually be having a hormonal breakdown? Was this where he was expected to talk him through all of life's attractions and explain that beauty was inside, not out?

If so, he was going to need a pint-glass of Smirnoff. And an ice bath. Danny's room was like the fucking Sahara.

"Danny, put your fucking arms down. What's wrong? Did your ego finally inflate too far and burst? Create hundreds of tiny little zits of arrogance all over your face?"

Slowly, Danny pulled his arms away from his face. Tom squinted in the dim lighting, and then stumbled back in horror at what he saw. Danny, eyes huge, clutched his face again.

"I've got ego-pox!"

* * *

"Harry, move your arse. We need a trained first aider, pronto."

Harry wrenched his eyes open and smacked Tom's hand away. "'Fuck are you doing in here, then? S'ain't a bloody hospital."

"I gathered, the hygiene is appalling. Seriously, move it. Danny's exploded."

Harry blinked and sat up. "What?"

"You heard me. He's exploded. From the inside out."

"What in the name of Jesus' left ballsack are you talking about?"

"He's got chicken pox."

"Oh." Harry fell back on to his pillows. "Ha."

Tom smacked him. "Don't laugh!" But Harry's smirk was getting bigger by the second, so he turned and stomped away. "Get up, arseface, you need to go to the store and get some... well, chicken- pox cure. What even cures chicken- pox? Apart from cutting it's figurative head off with an axe _a la _Chicken Run, I mean?"

Harry fell out of bed and ran to follow Tom as he began to descend the stairs. "Tom! I'm not going out there!" He grabbed Tom's shoulder and jerked him around. "It's like..." they both turned to look out of the window, winced, and quickly looked away again. "It's like, seven hundred degrees out there! I'll burn like a Weasley!"

"Well, you'd only have to look at Danny to feel better about yourself. You should see his _face_; join the dots and you could recreate a Van Gogh."

* * *

By the time he was halfway to the shop- which was approximately two minutes around the corner- Harry closely resembled Charmandar. A very melted Charmandar, with sweat patches large enough to drown a moderately-sized child.

After falling through the door he spent a good four minutes on his knees under the air-conditioning, gasping for air, before getting up to search for anything that might ease Danny's pain. He truly felt sorry for the lad; it wasn't often that somebody like Danny Jones even had to worry about a singular black head, let alone a platoon of bright red spots marching over his face in a single-minded effort to ruin his complexion.

It took ten minutes to pack a trolley with everything Harry saw as beneficial to the cause. Oatmeal, because he had heard somewhere that oatmeal baths were soothing on pox-ated skin. Eleven pints of milk, because it would take roughly that amount to create the oatmeal bath, and have leftovers for the Special K that he hadn't had a chance to eat yet. Five different brands of face wash, all claiming to 'zap that acne!' (or some variation of the sentiment), ranging from with-lumps to without-lumps and everything in between. Savlon. TCP. Sellotape. Leg wax. Vaseline. A pair of funky fluorescent socks (for himself, off course). Soup (but not chicken flavoured, lest it anger the pox). Two bottles of Smirnoff, for when Danny's agony took Harry to the brink of madness and he would need alcohol to come back (which it inevitably would).

He was outside, with seven bags, before he realised that there was no possible way he was going to be able to hike back around the corner without going in to cardiac arrest.

So he put down the bags and pulled out his phone to call a taxi.

* * *

Dougie had never laughed so hard in his life.

But Danny's _face_. There were hundreds of them on his nose alone. Little red spots just waiting to have all kinds of piss taken out of them- so take the piss he did, by waltzing over to Danny's sick-bed-slash-sofa and saying, in a cheery voice, "Tom, Snow White called! She wants her eighth dwarf back! Goes by the name of Spotty!"

Oh, his wit knew no bounds.

He was regretting it now, though. Danny, who had been flopped on the sofa in no small measure of itchiness, had been able to do no more than flip him the two-fingered salute. The heat had done the dirty work for him; hysterical laughter plus sun equals heat stroke. Apparently. Dougie was now gasping under a tree in the back garden, quite certain that any amount of exertion would definitely kill him off.

"No," he yelled back at the house, "No, sorry, can't move. Don't care if he scratches so hard he pulls his face off, I am in the clutches of death myself you know. Sort out your fucking priorities, you big-chinned anus, who's more important here? Me, or the bloody poultry?"

* * *

"It's disgusting!"

"Danny, give me the mirror."

"It's foul!"

"Yes, in both senses of the word." Tom paused. "Get it? Foul? Fowl? Birds? Chicke- oh whatever, give- me- the- _mirror_-" Tom wrestled the hand mirror out of Danny's spotty hand, took a minute to wonder where the fickery crickery he _got _a hand held mirror, and then lobbed it across the room, where it landed with a smash.

In the time it took to run over, pick up the broken glass, dump it in the nearest cup, and return to Danny, the moron was on his knees staring at his reflection in the blank television screen.

"It's horrendous!" He moaned, clawing at his face. "It's grossest of all gross things! Totally grossed out!"

Tom stormed to the television, whipped off his shirt and positioned it so that the reflections were well hidden.

"Oh, _ew_!"

"Hey!" Tom whirled around, jabbing a finger at the invalid. "I'm not _that _fa- _Where did you get that spoon?"_

"Awful," Danny groaned, gazing at his face reflected in the spoon and running a hand down his cheek. "In_sufferable_, in_tolerable_, in-in_dignified_, dis_graceful_, dis_gusting_-" Tom, with some effort, managed to wrestle the spoon away and lob it through the door. "Bringing _shame _to my _family_, what will my mother _say _when she _sees _me..."

The front door slammed. Tom strode out and stabbed a finger at Harry, very nearly impaling the taller boy via his nose.

"Watch it! Nearly took my brains out!"

"_Where have you been_?"

"I've been at the shop, dumbass, getting the things _you _wanted me to get-"

"What took you so long, he's driving me _insane_!"

"The taxi got stuck in traffic!"

Tom froze. "Taxi?"

"Oh, please." Harry shifted the bags and snorted derisively. "You think I was gonna walk back in _that _heat? May come as a shock to you, but there are _camels _dying from dehydration out there."

Tom started to say something, stuck his fist in his mouth and screamed. Then, grabbing some of the bags from Harry, he stalked in to the kitchen. Harry followed him and made a beeline for the water cooler.

"Dougie!" Tom roared through the window. "Get in here and help, you scrawny beedle- flap!"

Harry paused, head under the water cooler's spout, and gazed at him with interest. "Beedle- flap? Is it too hot for you, Tom? Should I get an ice- pack?"

"Yeah. Yeah, get an ice- pack, and stick it up your-"

The door swung open. Dougie shuffled in, smiled faintly, and passed out.

Tom and Harry stared at him for a minute.

The minute turned in to two.

Two minutes stretched out to three, then four. Danny must have found another reflective surface in the living room, because soon wails of misery were bouncing through the hall.

Harry turned back to the water cooler and gained seven pounds of water weight and a brain freeze.

Tom turned back to the table and gained seven grey hairs and a head ache.

"Milk?" He asked, weakly. Harry nodded.

"Oatmeal bath."

"Water," Tom murmured, "Infused with oatmeal. Not a literal- oh, dear. I think I may explode."

* * *

Dougie was revived half an hour later with a smack to the face and a kiss on the ear. He shot up and across the room, and Harry spent a good few minutes in hysterical laughter. Alas and alack, he soon fell fate to the same pains Dougie had felt from such an exertion of emotion just two hours ago, and found himself moaning on the grass in the exact same spot as his blonde friend had nearly died in.

* * *

Midday came and went. Danny refused to eat, and only drank when Tom found a box of curly straws at the back of the plate cupboard. Then, of course, Danny was perfectly willing to consume any liquid within four feet of himself. Any further, and it just wasn't worth the effort.

* * *

"Danny?"

Danny slowly turned his head, a pitiful look on his face. Dougie was sat on the floor by his sofa, looking slightly put out. "Danny, are you going to turn in to a chicken?"

Danny closed his eyes, oh so slowly, and then opened them again, oh so slower.

He heaved a gigantic yawn.

He cleared his throat.

"Bok," He said seriously, gazing in to Dougie's blue eyes with the air of a dying man. "Bok, bokbok, bok."

Dougie stared at him.

Danny stared back.

"_Tom_!" Dougie howled, scrambling to his feet and shooting from the room. "_Danny's turning in to a chicken_!"

* * *

Things that made an appearance on Danny's body that had not been there the previous day tallied up to 67 poxes (Danny counted, and Harry second- checked them. Harry personally thought at least 6 of the alleged poxes were actually freckles, but Danny was adamant that, no, they _itched_, and so they made the cut), four scratches and two impressive bruises. The origin of the scratches was unknown, but it was likely that he had attained them while throwing himself around the bedroom in grief after waking up that morning. The bruises were from Dougie; after Tom had explained the concept of chicken- pox, Dougie had pitched a super-size fit and attacked Danny with the force of a small lorry.

It was worth it.

"Tom! Get me some water!"

The total number of bruises was thus increased as Tom lobbed the remote control at Danny's face.

"Now I'm bruised _and _spotty! This is _abominable_!"

"Nothing like a bout of plague to raise the standards of one's vocabulary," Harry muttered as he shuffled past with a bowl of ice cream.

"Tom! Get me ice cream!"

And so the increase in bruises on Danny's once-perfect face continued.

* * *

Dougie chewed his lip as he worked over Danny's face. Placing some of the gritty Clearasil acne-scrub on his fingertips, he gently pulled the brunette curls back from Danny's scowling face and began massaging it in.

"How many have we done now? This is dumb, it isn't working!"

"Stop talking, your face is moving. And three."

"Three! Pah! _Three!"_

The point Danny was trying to make with this statement was unknown, and remained so, as the next twenty minutes was dedicated to removing the face- scrub from his left eye.

* * *

"It itches so bad."

Tom sighed. He had to admit, even after Danny had pushed him to the brink of madness with his non-stop complaints and demands, he _did _have some pity for the guy.

It would have been hard not to pity him.

After all, he was tied to a chair with oven mitts encasing his hands.

"_Please _let me go. I _swear _I won't scratch," Danny whined, puppy-dog eyes turned up to 2000 and aimed straight at Tom's heart.

"No."

* * *

"Ugh, this is taking for_ever_."  
"Longer than that. It's taking, like, _five-ever_."

"_Totally_."

Dougie and Harry were knelt over the bath, each armed with a wooden spoon, both surrounded by bowls, pots, and pans. Some were full to the brim with freshly- microwaved oatmeal; some were full to the brim with not-so-freshly microwaved oatmeal (by the time they finished heating up the last bowl, the first could only be described as 'fucking freezing'); some were empty. All were, at one point or another, being emptied in to the bath.

"My arm aches."

"Same."

And they sat, and stirred, and poured, and stirred, and complained, and poured, and stirred, until it was complete.

* * *

And this was how it came to be that Daniel Jones, dignified, intelligent, cunning, mega-ultra famous Daniel Jones, ended up sat in a bath of oatmeal, with oven mitts taped on his hands and several varieties of face scrub covering his entire head and shoulders.

"Don't mean to lower the tone," He said, to the three boys watching him with serious expressions, "But I'm pretty sure I just lost my anal virginity to an oat."


End file.
